Saturday, 20 June 2015

Finished the decks.

Over the weekend I put the last couple of deck pieces on, at the bow on the starboard side. After gluing the front piece down, I cut a hole in it so I can access the anchor well and added a little bronze flange as a scupper for the anchor well.

This is only on the starboard side. There's nothing on the port side, so I'm a little concerned that Poseidon will notice Elena only has one eye and will sink us for bad Feng Shui. If I obsess too much about it, I've got another bit of bronze to add a scupper to the other side.

Mogget's taken residence in the anchor well, as expected.

The gunnels are held on with screws at 480mm centres. I haven't glued them down yet, as I'm waiting on chainplates, which will be sandwiched between gunnel and hull, so I need to make a slot in the gunnels to clear the chainplates. I think I'll skip the rubbing strip at the bottom of the top plank. I think it looks nice with just the gunnel, and am happy to carry fenders to protect the paint from docks etc.

I've been doing a bit of bronze work of late, turning a pin for the mast pivot and finishing out the centerboard lifting tackle. The lifting tackle consists of a sheave on a 6.35mm stainless pivot, with a couple of bronze plates and some more stainless to make a becket. I added 4mm stainless countersunk screws to the end of the pivot to locate it in the centerboard. These are thus far the only metric fasteners on the boat.

I've got a high zoot-factor Ronstan "orbit" 40mm double pulley up the front, with a dyneema lashing holding it to a nice old fashioned bronze eye. The mix of extremely traditional and extremely high-tech pleases the perv in me.

I really like this dyneema/spectre UHMW rope, by the way. Really like. I'm going to use it for all my standing rigging, so there will be no yucky wire.